


and if lancelot was a fool, oh oh my dear, then what does that make you?

by mouseymightymarvellous



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, F/F, F/M, Heartbreak, Multi, Naruto Rare Pair Bingo 2019, falling apart to come together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 17:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19404925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: Ino had always joked with a wink that she would go to her knees in front of Sakura's high altar and sacrifice to her courage and her beauty.She just never thought what she would sacrifice would be their love.They are gods, and this had never meant they have been able to do anything but try to fight what fate would give them. They are gods, and never before has Ino rued that she will live forever.





	and if lancelot was a fool, oh oh my dear, then what does that make you?

The myths the humans will tell will call her power hungry. Jealous and reaching. Earth goddess who came from dust and wanted to swallow the sun whole.

But the truth, Ino will know—for as long as humans worship in her name and even after that, at the end of the universe, when she has been forgotten as all gods must one day be forgotten—is simply that Sakura loved Naruto most.

And as Ino dresses her love, her battle-wife, in the molten gown that has been fashioned for her marriage out of a southern wind and a strand from the magma flows that run along the continental shelf and the blood of a thousand sacrifices, she weeps for the fact that Ino is only who Sakura loves best, and that this is not enough to keep her.

“There,” Ino says, and steps back to make a final adjustment to the train.

Sakura takes a breath, rolls her shoulders back, and lifts her head.

Ino catches her eye in the mirror, and can do nothing more than stare.

The humans will sing songs and paint canvasses and craft poetry and sculpt marble of this sight for the next millennia and beyond, but here, in Sakura’s rooms with their views out onto the flowering orchards and flourishing rice paddies, it is a sight for Ino’s eyes alone.

“Ino,” Sakura sighs.

On her face is the kohl Ino has lined her eyes with and gold paint Ino has dabbed and sorrow Ino has inflicted and absolutely no remorse.

Ino hates her for it.

Ino loves her for it.

“Even when we are eventually overthrown,” Sakura tells Ino with the lips Ino has kissed but will kiss no more, “even when we are eventually forgotten—I will love you even after the last star in the sky has been devoured, until my loving you is the only thing left in the universe.”

“But you will marry him,” Ino says, and wishes she could carve the grief from her bones, wishes that she could do anything but carry it with her from here to that same end, “and that love will be eclipsed.”

And then, because Ino is no earth goddess to plant her feet and refuse to move, she turns her back on the Wife of the Laughing Breeze and pretends that she cannot hear Sakura cry out for her as she walks out of the room.

Naruto is no sun god, but he shines just as bright as he marries Sakura in front of the gods and puts a crown on her head.

It looks right, this crown of soft blooming buds and gnarled tree roots and iron veins, sitting atop the delicate pink braids Ino had so carefully woven into Sakura’s hair, a complex tapestry of love if one knows how to read the knots.

As the coronet settles, the gods let out a sigh, which sweeps out of the cavernous throne room and out into the world, and the whole universe settles with it. Under Ino’s feet, the earth is finally quiet.

The old gods know they have lost.

As one, the new gods let out a scream of victory, and Naruto pulls Sakura up with gentle hands to stand and meet the future.

Ino stays the night at the palace so that she may see Sakura when they break their fast in the Great Hall.

Ino isn’t a minor goddess, but she doesn’t have the strength to stand against the God-King either. It wouldn’t matter though, not if Sakura hurt. Ino would fight a new war for that slight, no matter that the last war has just ended, that this marriage has ended it for good.

But Sakura does not emerge all morning.

Ino is gone after the noon meal because she cannot imagine facing a Sakura who is no longer hers, who she has lost to love.

In recompense, she commandeers one of the wind steeds from the royal stables.

It isn’t the same, not nearly. And Naruto would never think to begrudge her one of his mounts. But it is a small cut to soothe her own wounds.

(It isn’t enough. It never will be.)

Helpfully, war breaks out on the northern border just as Ino is running out of excuses for not showing her face at court. Demigods and some other dissidents chafing at the new regime.

Ino is not a warrior the way most of the others gods are warriors, but she has her whispers, and she would be riding hard for the camps even if the prayers for her assistance weren’t descending from the border like storm clouds, because she gets word from Shikamaru that her council is needed.

She has been keeping busy with tracking the progress of the war, riding the currents of information and rumour that ripple at the edge of the rising tide, and it is a relief to have something concrete to finally put a blade to.

War is not the same without Sakura returning to their shared tent, armour clad and painted in blood and ichor, but nothing is the same without Sakura.

Ino will never get used to it.

Ino will have to get used to it.

War is another distraction, and Ino sinks beneath its waves.

The fighting crept close enough to their eastern flank that Ino ended up on the battlefield.

She is sore and bloody and nursing a particularly large and deep bruise where a demigod kicked her to the ground. She still has reports to compile from her agents, and all she wants to do is sleep, but the war will not wait for her to rest. Just a little longer, now.

She almost puts a blade into her king.

“Naruto,” Ino says, surprisingly calm, “why are you sitting in my tent in the dark?”

He’s supposed to be on the western flank making a push into enemy territory. They’ve been hearing the howling winds for weeks now.

He says nothing, so Ino ignores him to light the lamps scattered across her desk and hanging from the supporting posts.

When they are lit, Ino can see how Naruto carries shadows under his eyes, and how they are all the more blue for it.

He looks tired. Too tired. More tired than he would let most others see him looking.

As much as it hurt to lose Sakura to her marriage, it hurt to lose Naruto, too.

They have been friends for millennia.

It is not Naruto’s fault Ino can’t stand the sight of him. It isn’t anyone’s fault, none of this.

Well, maybe Sasuke’s—if he’d stayed, things would have been different. But Sasuke couldn’t stay (and Ino can’t blame him for that, not really), and so all that was left to keep them all together was Naruto and Sakura, the two of them brilliant and beautiful and the only thing strong enough to cement the new gods’ dominion.

He looks tired and hurting, just as Ino is tired and hurting, and she could weep for it.

“Do you love her,” he finally asks, once Ino has divested herself of her armour and read through a stack of reports, “as much as she loves you?”

Ino’s hand freezes for a moment in her note-taking, before she forces herself to keep moving, cursing herself for flinching.

And then she throws the reed down and stands, whirling, her lips curling up in a snarl.

How dare he?

How _dare_ he?

As if he doesn’t know. As if it matters.

“Not as much as she loves you,” Ino spits, like poison, like a curse.

What a question, when the stars still burn overhead.

What a question, when the universe still breathes and they stand here in their prime, bloodied and vicious and, right now, toasts and prayers in their names fill the air, as if they will never be forgotten.

Naruto bows his head, grief rounding his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks. “Ino, I am so sorry, I didn’t know— If I’d known— There should have been another way.”

As suddenly as it rose in her breast, rearing their ugly heads, the jealousy and the rage subside, and Ino deflates.

He is weeping.

And Ino loves him, this god of the wind, son of a lightning strike and a demon, raised as a mere mortal and risen to greatness. She loves this god she followed into war and this god-king she will die for and her dearest love’s husband and her own dear friend.

And Ino hates him, because it is easier than facing all the ways that even gods are trapped by circumstance.

“But I will make this right,” Naruto declares.

He coughs, squares his shoulders, and raises his head.

Eyes as blue as a summer-hot day and belief enough to remake the world.

Ino’s breath catches.

And then Naruto stands, as quick as lightning, pulling Ino to his chest, and they are racing away, carried by the winds.

Ino stumbles when they slam into the ground, but Naruto keeps a hold of her, his hands hot where they are pressed to the nape of her neck and the small of her back.

Ino gasps a deep breath, and her nose is flooded with the familiar scent of Sakura’s favourite perfume and the sharp tang of iron.

She stands, frozen, in Naruto’s embrace.

His hands on her are the only thing keeping her standing.

“Sakura,” Naruto singsongs, “I’ve brought you a gift.”

Ino shakes her head against him.

No. She isn’t ready.

Naruto presses her closer to him and kisses her hairline softly, in benediction or sympathy or grief—she doesn't know.

“Breathe, Ino,” he whispers to her. “It is only our wife.”

_Our wife_.

Naruto married Sakura in front of the all the gods and put a crown on her head and made her his queen.

But Ino married Sakura first, long before they were anything more than minor goddesses fighting a war because it was duty, because their god-king would have plucked the stars from the sky and swallowed them, so unfilled by avarice was he. Ino married Sakura drenched in blood and mud, with screams trapped under their tongues, long before they learned to be brave and dared to dream of any future that was not dying to war and being forgotten by it.

Battle-wife, and Ino had woven a coronet of dandelions for Sakura to wear as they swore their vows in full face of the stars above.

“We fought too long to have anything other than love at the end,” Naruto swears to her.

Ino would have followed him to any end.

Maybe, she can follow him to this one.

She turns, and Naruto lets her go, and all there is is Sakura’s heartsore face in front of her, filled with enough hope to remake the world.

Much later, Naruto watches Ino in the slow dawn blooming over the sprawl of Sakura between them.

Ino gives him her hand when he reaches for it, and Naruto presses a kiss sweet enough to leave her breathless to her palm.

The humans will never sing of this. There will be no painting or sculptures.

But as Naruto smiles at Ino like the rising sun, Sakura pressed warm and close between them, Ino knows that she will remember this long after they are nothing more than dust and forgotten names, until the end of all things.


End file.
